


Little Shots Who Keep Shooting

by sinuous_curve



Category: Captain America (2011)
Genre: Community: kink_bingo, Guns, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-13
Updated: 2011-08-13
Packaged: 2017-10-22 14:28:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/239046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinuous_curve/pseuds/sinuous_curve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>It takes Howard Stark three days to knock together Steve’s uniform, which is a testament to his manufacturing abilities that he cobbles together what he needs so fast and so well. Steve steps out with his hands spread, shoulders shifting beneath the unfamiliar weight of the new duds and says, “Not too shabby, you think?”</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Little Shots Who Keep Shooting

It takes Howard Stark three days to knock together Steve’s uniform, which is a testament to his manufacturing abilities that he cobbles together what he needs so fast and so well. Steve steps out with his hands spread, shoulders shifting beneath the unfamiliar weight of the new duds and says, “Not too shabby, you think?”

Bucky is only there because he and Steve managed to oversleep in their tiny little room tucked away in the secret barracks the SSR managed to cobble together as unobtrusively as possible in the middle of London. He has this nagging sense that they’re not being as subtle as they think they are -- and Steve just isn’t that subtle, period -- but no one’s saying anything and Bucky’ll take it. Especially if it means keeping no more than six feet away from Steve at any given moment.

Howard Stark whistles between his teeth and claps his hands mockingly together. “ _Hel_ lo, soldier. I am a genius.”

Steve blushes and ducks his head. “It was my design.”

“Mostly your design,” Howard corrects, crossing his arms over his chest. His grin is wry and deeply self-satisfied. Leaning unobtrusively against the wall, Bucky swallows a snort and wonders if Howard was half as proud when they opened the metal chamber and Captain America stepped out.

“Whatever you say,” Steve says, rolling his eyes. “What do you think, Bucky?”

Bucky thinks the cognitive dissonance between the Steve he played baseball with back in Brooklyn, and first kissed under the pier at Coney Island while they both had hot dogs in their hand, and the man strapped into Howard Stark’s uniform is going to kill him one day. That, and there are limits to how much the army, even SSR, is willing to overlook and shoving Steve down to get his hands in those new, blue trousers crosses that line.

“Nice and heroic,” Bucky says. “Captain.”

“Better than the tights?” For a split second, Steve looks almost impish, which is a much odder expression coming from a man who tops six feet with muscles to spare than it was coming from a stick skinny shrimp.

“Better than the tights,” Bucky confirms.

Howard spends fifteen minutes peering at Steve from every angle and writing down a couple scrawled adjustments he wants to make on a scrap of paper. Then he hustles Steve back into his dress greens and shoos them both away, saying that the muscle’s done what’s needed for the day and they can get gone.

It’ll be at least a couple more days before they head out of London toward Hydra and for all that London’s Blitz scars are raw and open and even still smoking in some places, it’s still a pretty fine day as they emerge onto the sidewalk and fall in step side by side. Steve tips his face up to the watery sun and closes his eyes. Their footfalls sound very softly on the quiet street. The bar won’t open for a few hours yet.

“I wish we could just get going,” Steve says.

Bucky glances at him. “One of these days I’m going to stop believing you don’t have a death wish,” he says, but without heat or reproach. He understands, to an extent. The sitting around waiting is worse than the doing.

Steve knocks his shoulder into Bucky’s. “You know what I mean. What we’ll be doing. It’s important.”

“Yeah, I know.” Bucky inhales long and slow and exhales the same way. The sun feels good on his face and the air is almost fresh, without the persistent scent of shit and blood and ash. His uniform is clean and it fits, because it hasn’t been cobbled together from whatever he could find. No holes in his shoes, either.

And he’s giving it all up to go back into hell because Steve _asked_ and because Steve believes and Bucky isn’t good at saying no to Steve.

“It makes me antsy,” Steve admits, shrugging. “I’ve given them all the information I have, it’s all just paperwork and waiting now.”

Bucky nods. He’s still more or less shocked that he’s alive. Just getting up in the morning and walking down the street can sometimes catch him hard in his soft spots as such an unlikely thing to do. Back when he first came to England, before he ever saw a bullet fired from a Nazi gun, he’d do calisthenics when he got that itch beneath his skin, or start letters to Steve that always trailed off into inadequacy and never got finished.

Neither of those are really options and the only other thing Bucky really wants to do is take Steve back to one of their rooms and break a mattress. And he’s not fool enough to think that’s a good idea, not when there’s every chance in the world the Colonel or someone higher up in brass will suddenly need Steve for a meeting and come busting in, because there isn’t privacy in the United States Army.

“Come on,” Bucky says, turning back on his heel.

Steve raises an eyebrow. “Where are we going?”

“Come on,” Bucky repeats. “I’m not kidnapping you, scout’s honor.”

They end up right back at the SSR’s subterranean headquarters, smiling at the young woman who wryly asks if they forgot something as she lets them in through the secret entrance. Bucky leads Steve in the opposite direction of Howard Stark’s commandeered lab space, past the rows of tiny cubicles masquerading as offices for the men with very important looking rows of bars and medals on their uniformed chests.

At the far end, there’s a long, awkward space that was never much used until some enterprising soul tacked a couple sheets of silhouetted paper on the wall and ka-zam, called it a shooting range. It’s a little ragged; the walls are exposed stone that’s cracking in places and seeping through with tepid water in others. But they’re far enough underground that you can shoot as long and as loud as you want and no one will really notice.

As the Colonel said during the highly unofficial tour when they got to London, short of setting off a bazooka that would blow them all to hell, they can shoot as many holes in the damn wall as they want.

“I know how to use a gun,” Steve says, eying Bucky.

“I know,” Bucky retorts. “Practice makes perfect, _Cap_ , and what else are we gonna do?”

Something tight and conflicted spasms across Steve’s face, which is more or less precisely what Bucky expected. He’s not a fool; he knows damn well that Steve likes guns almost less than he likes bullies, except he can see the practical use that guns have where bullies are almost universally useless.

Bucky’s pretty sure it has something to do with the way his dad died; not necessarily of mustard gas, but him dying in a war, and the way his mother soured on just about anything and everything to do with violence. She was a nurse and Bucky mostly remembers her a kind, tired woman in white with hands red from how often she washed them with harsh soap. She made dinners in bare feet that always struck Bucky as so incredibly intimate and always set a third place. Bucky can hear her saying, “I don’t hold with hurting people; it’s my job to patch them up.”

He wonders how she’d feel about the soldier her son has become and knows -- absolutely and totally _knows_ in his gut -- that she’d be proud and scared and a little tearful.

“Come on,” Bucky cajoles lightly. “Show me what you’ve got. I thought getting a gun was the best part of being a soldier?”

They’re supposed to be armed at all times, even though England is an Allied nation and there about as safe as they can be on this side of the Atlantic. Steve’s draws his Colt from the holster slowly, frowning around the edges of his mouth. He tightens his fingers around the grip and keeps it pointed toward the stone floor underfoot. Bucky hides a smile.

“Pull off a round,” Bucky instructs, sweeping his arm toward the low wooden crates strewn across the room as a kind of haphazard range marker.

Steve slowly steps up to the crates, settling both his hands tight around the grip of his Colt. Bucky retreats four feet behind him. It’s an M1911, just like the vast majority of the American soldiers he has ever met, except for the officers, who carry their own special pieces.

Bucky watches Steve take up a firing stance. His newly broad shoulders flex beneath the thick, heavy cloth of his uniform jacket. He shifts his weight forward just a little bit, so he’s settled on the balls of his feet. He raises his arms and his shoulders are ridiculous, Bucky decides. Fucking, goddamn ridiculous and he wants to press his face into the smooth muscle and inhale Steve’s scent.

He takes a deep breath and fires his Colt with an echoing bang that shudders against Bucky’s earlobes through the fingers he has plugged into them. On the far wall, a chip of stone explodes outward right on the edge of the paper silhouette’s right shoulder.

“Not bad,” Bucky says quietly and Steve jumps a little, fumbling to thumb the safety on.

Steve looks over his shoulder with spots of color high on his cheeks and his mouth depressed into a thin, tight line. Bucky can _feel_ the tension vibrating off him in tangible waves. “I. Thank you.”

“Do you always jerk to the right like that?” Bucky asks.

He honest to God doesn’t mean anything by it other than a genuine question, then Steve goes from bright pink to nearly red and Bucky snorts out a laugh he can’t help. Steve drops one hand from the Colt and rubs it over his face as Bucky smirks, closing the five feet between them with measured, sure steps.

“Yes,” Steve says, nodding. He casts his glance toward the paper on the far wall and frowns. “I thought at first it was just because I was small, you know? The first time I fired a bolt off a rifle I knocked myself flat and I thought the Colonel was going to kick me out then and there. But it’s still happening.”

Privately, Bucky is deeply amused by the thought of Steve flying backward into the dirt with a bucking gun in his hands. He’s neither cruel enough nor certain enough of what they are to say as much, so he bites the inside of his cheek and narrows his focus to Steve’s weapon. “Take your stance again.”

Steve complies, settling his feet shoulder width apart and adjusting back to a two handed grip. He raises his arms and takes a moment to settle into the pose, then freezes into a stillness so complete Bucky can barely see him breath. Bucky takes a step back and observes him; it looks just about right, inasmuch as anything Steve does looks not quite yet natural on his new frame.

“Here. Let me just--”

Bucky fits himself along the length of Steve’s back, so his chest lays flush against Steve’s spine and shoulder blades. His hips fit snug against Steve’s ass and this is maybe not entirely about getting in some good, old fashioned target practice. Steve’s breath picks up a little bit.

There’s hasn’t really been enough time for Bucky to learn the new planes of Steve’s body. Their couplings are done quickly, and in the dark, as quietly as they can manage. And it’s more than Bucky ever expected to find three thousand miles away from Brooklyn and their tiny, terrible apartments where they could bounce a squeaky mattress to their heart’s content and then maybe slip down to a bad part of town to one of the underground bars where they could sit close and hold hands and not attract anything much more than an approving wink from the barman.

“Am I good?” Steve murmurs.

“Just about.” Bucky skims his palms down the length of Steve’s arms. It used to be so much easier to wrap himself around Steve, when he was smaller. He closes his hands over Steve’s and shifts a little, so he can sight over Steve’s shoulder. “Lift just a little.”

Steve raises his hands a fraction of an inch and Bucky can feel that sense of slotting right into place. He never really wanted to be a soldier the same way Steve did. It was something to do, to get out of Brooklyn and working on the docks, and maybe a little bit because of his dead old man that Bucky only half remembers. But he’s good at it, has been from the moment they slapped him into uniform and shoved a gun in his hand.

“You get nervous when you think about it,” Bucky says into Steve’s ear. “Not when you’re fighting and you don’t have time, but when you think about it. You’d be a terrible sniper.”

“That’s why I have you around.”

Bucky chuckles. “Just take a deep breath. In and out.”

They inhale together. Bucky is utterly conscious of everything around him. The water dripping to the floor in the corner, the fabric of their uniforms shifting and shushing together, his heart thumping slowly and steadily against his ribs. Steve’s skin is so hot, it has been ever since he found Bucky in the Hydra base.

“Fire on the exhale.”

Bucky squeezes Steve’s finger on the trigger and the gun roars. Another chip blasts off the wall, dead in the center of the silhouette. Right over the heart. Steve’s weight pushes back against Bucky’s like the force of the blast was enough to shove him backward, closer.

“Oh,” Steve says, sounding utterly surprised.

“Bullseye,” Bucky laughs.


End file.
